Unexpected Truth – Cross Before Crown

Unexpected Truth – Cross Before Crown isn’t the message that we wanted to hear.  I wanted to hear that life will be fun and easy.  There is no passage that says Christianity or life in general will be fun or easy.  Rather Jesus promises us a cross to bear.

Looking Forward

For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed.

What do you have to look forward to?  I don’t know about you, I like my job, but there are parts that I have to grind through.  Part of the way I do this is by plowing through an hour of work and then have some kind of a payoff, a treat, or reward – just a break.  The thing is that everyday I wake excite for what God in store for me.  God says that’s how creation is.  The world you live on can’t wait to see perfection, glory restored.  That happens a little bit every time a Christian a child of God comes to faith.  This quickly points to the end of the world as we struggle through our groan before glory.

The Circle of Death

For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it,

We touched on this with the video from Nepal, but the forces of nature that God created rip itself apart.  Talk about frustration – some people look at the world and see a circle of life, that kind of a euphemism when you compare our present state of affairs to the Garden of Eden before the fall into sin.  The irony is that it isn’t a circle of life, it’s a circle of death.  Death was never designed to be part of creation.  God created the world to live forever.  Now it’s fallen.  Animals die and become extinct – a part of the world that God created is gone.  What a horrible consequence of sin!

It’s important to note that God is the one who cursed the ground after the fall.  The only thing worse than living in a sinful world would be living in a sinful world forever!  This too shall pass.

Want to hear more?  Watch this week’s message from Romans 8, Unexpected Truth – Cross Before Crown.